Blithe Spirit (1945)
Average Rating: 7.1/10
Reviews Counted: 17
Fresh: 12 | Rotten: 5
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: N/A
Critic Reviews: 3
Fresh: 2 | Rotten: 1
liked it
Average Rating: 3.8/5
User Ratings: 1,464
My Rating
Movie Info
The Noel Coward/David Lean combination which turned out such dramas as Brief Encounter and This Happy Breed sets its sights on the viewer's funny bone with Blithe Spirit. Rex Harrison plays a novelist, newly married to straight-laced Constance Cummings. Via a seance, Harrison accidentally summons the spirit of his first wife, Kay Hammond. Believing that Hammond wants to ruin his marriage, Harrison enlists the services of local medium Madame Arcati (Margaret Rutherford) to exorcise Hammond's
Jan 1, 1945 Wide
Dec 9, 1998
Cast
-
Rex Harrison
Charles Condomine -
Constance Cummings
Ruth Condomine -
Kay Hammond
Elvira Condomine -
Margaret Rutherford
Madame Arcati -
Hugh Wakefield
George Bradman -
Joyce Carey
Violet Bradman -
Jacqueline Clark
Edith -
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All Critics (17) | Top Critics (3) | Fresh (12) | Rotten (6) | DVD (4)
Inasmuch as this is largely a photographed copy of the stage play [by Noel Coward], the camerawork is outstandingly good and helps to put across the credibility of the ghost story more effectively than the flesh and blood performance does.
Nifty special effects for the time, and plenty of Coward's inimitable wit and repartee.
Top CriticPassably good, but it should have been better, what with Rex Harrison, Constance Cummings, and Margaret Rutherford reading the Noel Coward lines.
... a lightweight comedy built on witty remarks and upper-class smugness (which Rex Harrison so perfectly embodies), but comedy is not Lean's strong suit.
Blithe Spirit is beloved by so many people that I feel like a curmudgeon handing it a mixed review. But when it comes to supernatural comedies starring Rex Harrison, I much prefer Joseph L. Mankiewicz's 1947 The Ghost and Mrs. Muir.
While Coward's witty dialogue and pungent take on the mores of the British upper crust can't help but elicit some smiles, as a whole Blithe Spirit feels like a film that is just going through the motions.
As the medium Madame Arcatti, Margareth Rutherford stole every scene in David Lean's screen adaptation of Nowel Coward's witty play.
A quicksilver cocktail.
[A] deliciously cheeky Noel Coward concoction...
It remains somewhat theatrical.
Worth it just for Margaret Rutherford as a sort of girls' school gamesmistres-style psychic!
The last word in witty repartee of the most civilized kind - the sort of thing Noel Coward was known for, and nobody did better.
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Foreign Titles
- Blithe Spirit (1945) (DE)
- Blithe Spirit (1945) (UK)
